Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Saving the Town and #Giveaway

It’s all my fault. I invited Kate Hamilton to
come back to Asheboro. And that kind of changed the town forever. Murder will
do that. No, Kate’s not dead, but someone she knew most certainly is.

Kate and I were best friends back in high
school. Then Kate went off to college and never looked back. I followed her
career, and it seemed that she had some wonderful jobs along the way. The most
recent was as manager of an upscale hotel in Baltimore, which is only an hour
or two away but might as well be in a different universe.

I stayed in Asheboro, married Phil, the love
of my life, had a couple of kids, Jeffrey and Melissa, and lived what I thought
was a good life in my hometown. But I didn’t count on bigger things going
wrong—like Asheboro going broke. I never would have thought that a town could
do that, but when the money that comes in from taxes and the like turns out to
be less than the money the town is required to spend on schools and roads and
employees like the police (yes, even in a sleepy little town, you need police),
then the town has a real problem.

I’ll give the town council members credit for
trying to come up with a creative solution, but one of them—Cordelia Walker,
another classmate—wanted to take her own idea and use it for her benefit. The
council didn’t want that but since Cordelia was a bully it was hard to stand up
to her. Then I had the brilliant idea of bringing Kate back to help the town
out of its jam. After all, if she could run a deluxe hotel in a big city, she
should be able to fix Asheboro’s problems. It took a little persuading, but
since Kate was between jobs, and she loves a challenge (and I was the one who invited
her and believe me, I played the Old Friend card), she said she’d come back to
town and see what she could do to help.

That was before the murder. It didn’t
surprise anybody that the victim was Cordelia, since there was no shortage of
people who hated her. But that didn’t make it any easier to figure out who
killed her. Trust Kate to figure it out.

Looking for a good beach (or lake or mountain) read this summer? I'll be giving away a copy of Murder at the Mansion, the first of my new Victorian Village series.

Here's what reviewers have said about Murder at the Mansion:

"Fascinating read...The prolific Connolly kicks off a new series that skillfully combines history, romance, and mystery."

I am thrilled that I will have another fabulous Sheila C. series to read. I have loved all of them and know this one won't be any different. I am hoping to get a head start on this new series. Fingers are crossed for a copy from this giveaway for sure. I'd rather leave my Facebook info as I seem to have had some problems from leaving email info on posts. So it's Cynthia Bayer Blain that I'm hoping will have good news 😊 for me. Congratulations and best of everything on another series, Sheila. Thank you.Cynthia

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